Chapter 8 - THE INVITATION
Vanessa showed Claire the invitation.
Text message.
From a number saved as Rebecca Whitmore.
Dinner tonight. Claire already knows. Better to stop hiding.
Vanessa went because she believed the affair was about to become public anyway.
Rebecca denied sending it.
Phone records proved she had not.
The message came from a spoofed account created two days earlier.
Someone wanted Vanessa at dinner.
That contradicted Ryan’s claim that he told her to stay away.
Maybe both were true.
He may have warned her privately while someone else lured her in.
Why?
Naomi asked the darker question.
“If Ryan wanted Claire sick, why bring Vanessa close enough to take the wrong bowl?”
Claire thought.
“Maybe he didn’t.”
Then who?
They traced the spoofing service.
Payment came through a prepaid corporate card issued by Whitmore Coastal.
Cardholder:
Megan Evans.
Ryan’s assistant.
Megan denied sending the message.
She had reported the card missing weeks earlier.
Again.
Access without identity.
Then Megan admitted something.
Ryan had asked her to build a packet on Claire’s emergency-voting rules months earlier.
“He said the board needed continuity planning.”
Reasonable.
He also asked her to confirm Vanessa’s pregnancy due date.
Less reasonable.
Then investigators recovered a deleted calendar entry.
Ryan and company counsel.
Topic:
Forty-eight-hour governance window.
Date:
Three months before the dinner.
Claire stared.
The plan kept reaching backward.
Then Vanessa called, panicked.
Someone had broken into her sister’s apartment.
Nothing valuable taken.
Only the baby-trust folder missing.
Police found no forced entry.
Ryan had once been given a key.
He denied using it.
Then Vanessa remembered she had photographed every page of the trust.
One image showed a handwritten note in the margin.
If Claire unavailable before vote, fund immediately.
Initials:
R.W.
Ryan.
The baby trust was timed to Claire’s absence.
Vanessa whispered:
“He made my baby part of it.”
Claire corrected her quietly.
“No.”
Vanessa looked up.
“He made everyone part of it.”
Then Claire received a call from Rosa.
She had found the missing prescription bottle.
May you like
Not in Ryan’s things.
In Claire’s own travel case.
